Arkane: Dishonored’s Corvo Wasn’t Originally Silent

November 2, 2012
Written by Alex Osborn

While I’m sure most of you just assumed that the protagonist of Dishonored was planned to be a mute right from the beginning, Arkane Studios has spoken out to confess that during early development, Corvo was going to speak.

In an interview with OPM, Arkane Studio’s Raphael Colantonio explained that initially the team “added some text input options for Corvo around Alpha but never really went further.” He went on to add that “to this day, we wonder what the other version would have felt like in the game.”

Colantonio explained that the decision to make Corvo a silent character was as “deliberate choice”, not one made out of laziness or an inability to tackle such a challenge—after all, Arkane has proven to be quite the capable dev team. “If we portrayed Corvo angry and seeking revenge, it might offend the nonlethal player who is seeking a stable outcome for the City of Dunwall, and vice versa,” he concluded.

If Arkane does end up making a sequel, would you like to have a protagonist that speaks this time around? Let us know in the comments below.